Let's get this straight: the so-called RoastBusters who were the subject of a 3 News report last night are rapists. I'm hardly the first to say this: people in their own social networks seem to have been telling them the same for at least a year.

I discovered today that a friend's teenage daughter had encountered them. They tried to make her get into the boot of a car. She didn't, and she told her mum about it. Their actions might have been news to most of us last night, but it appears that they're known amongst their own. And that will be just as they like it.

Are these young men performing acts they've seen in pornography? Yes. But there's more to it than that. They're narcissists and bullies who probably do believe their own bullshit when they claim some solemn purpose to what they do. Because, after all, it brings them fame, and what greater justification would anyone need? Like all trolls, they lack empathy and sometimes even see themselves as victims.

Check out one of the ringleaders in the video on the news last night, Beraiah Hales (aka Fernando Hales), on this Facebook page he created for a supposed fight with his associate Joseph Parker, the other one in the video. (None of these pages contain explicit content so far as I can see, but parts are, obviously, offensive and may be triggering.)

We get this same hate all the time, We don't care about it. People should just accept us for who we are and what we have done cause if it hasnt hurt you then fuck off.. Before the roast busters page and videos.. Roast busters were already knowen by every, It wasn't us that talked about it. It was your friends and your friends friends.. We didnt expect to get out there as much as we did but it happen and now you're blaming us for it? Why?

As a number of commenters point out, there's a palpable homoerotic element to this. They're a bunch of young guys who like to get their cocks out together. And that's okay. What's not okay is them deliberately getting younger girls (sometimes under 16) intoxicated past the point of any consent, gangbanging them and then humiliating them as sluts for their Facebook audience. Rape is not okay.

I'm at a loss as to why, if the police have been watching them for for two years, it took a call from 3 News for Facebook to promptly take down the RoastBusters page. Did the police even discuss the page with Facebook? And do they really need a victim complaint to investigate?

What a bizarre story. I guess the problem, as with so many rape stories, is the difficulty that police have in getting evidence, when all there is is witnesses who won't testify. They may be completely sure that these guys are doing what they're doing, but apart from giving warnings (which they did) they can't touch them. But you're right, Facebook at the very least should not be condoning it.

I'd guess it's more to do with slut-shaming, which most likely has more power over very young girls. But it's going to end in tears for these guys - it's only going to take one girl to put them in prison for a long time, and for some pretty hard time too.

NetSafe chief technology officer Sean Lyons says in the past, such bragging would have been limited to the men's immediate social group, but social media allows them to reach a much bigger audience.

"You have an idea and you want to spread it – that's fine if you're talking about the student army down in Christchurch, it's not so good when you're talking about the outcomes that these guys were intending," he said on Firstline this morning.

"You think about being a victim of something and only a few people knowing, that's bad enough. But when suddenly you start to find out that people you hardly know… or just huge numbers of people randomly are seeing it, that's got to be an even more distressing position to be in."

This does rather make a case for the Harmful Digital Communications Bill.

"Leaving aside that what is being described here is very clearly rape, it seems pretty clear that it's also making an intimate visual recording without consent in terms of s 216 of the Crimes Act."

Also, honestly, two years? At some stage the police wouldn't want to get a little proactive and put some weekend surveillance in when young women are being raped? Even if it didn't lead to convictions, it might have had a preventative measure - excuse me sir, just before you go any further, can we talk to the young woman and you? Oh she's smashed, I think she can come with us and not with you. Thanks.

Here's what makes me so angry about that TV3 piece: the comments of the police. Repeatedly, they say they can't lay charges because none of the victims has been "brave enough" to come forward. Brave enough. Hey, young girl who's been repeatedly told that anything that happens to her while she's drunk is her own fault, other women are getting raped because you're a coward. It takes everything you've got to get out of bed in the morning, but you're just not Brave Enough.*

These guys admit what they do. They brag about it. Everyone knows who they are. But the responsibility for stopping them? Is apparently on their victims.

*I was sexually assaulted as a teenager by a group of guys. This sort of shit, while it sounds extreme, is exactly what goes through your head.

Here’s what makes me so angry about that TV3 piece: the comments of the police. Repeatedly, they say they can’t lay charges because none of the victims has been “brave enough” to come forward. Brave enough.

Yes. I swore when I heard that on the report last night. And he kept saying it.

If it was my daughter I'd just ring up a few mates and then go and give them a good hiding, with a promise of more where that came from if they didn't stop. As long as the parents of another victim were prepared to swear on the bible you were at their house the whole time, I doubt the police would investigate to hard.

My teenager showed me around the facebook mileu of which these creeps are an integral part. It was pretty sad, though maybe not surprising, that young women were complicit in some of it, at least in terms of tacitly accepting and condoning it. Now imagine how that perverse kind of peer pressure works on the minds of the victims. All in all, hideous.

Seems to me that telling them that what they're doing is illegal, but not following it up with enforcement, or "and while we can't prosecute you yet, here's what we're going to do to stop you" would just be emboldening.

Is basically saying "Yeah, we know, but we can't catch you" likely to have the desired effect? Ever?

My friend, naturally, praised and validated her daughter’s wise decision to get herself away from these creeps – and also verbally confronted one of the creeps. I don’t think she realised at the time the extent of what was going on.